We, the collective super-consciousness known as ANONYMOUS - the Voice of Free Speech & the Advocate of the People - have long heard you issue your venomous statements of hatred, and we have witnessed your flagrant and absurd displays of inimitable bigotry and intolerant fanaticism. We have always regarded you and your ilk as an assembly of graceless sociopaths...

...skip to the end...

...we will target your public Websites, and the propaganda & detestable doctrine that you promote will be eradicated; the damage incurred will be irreversible, and neither your institution nor your congregation will ever be able to fully recover.

Knee-trembling stuff I'm sure you'll agree.

And so 2011 looks set to see an epic battle waged between a self-righteous cult-like group of reactionary folk determined to attack and suppress people they disagree with, and the Westboro Baptist Church.

Now don't get me wrong: the Church are a vile organization whose primary contribution to civilization has been the invention of the homophobic funeral picket and the slogan "God Hates Fags", which is not an attack on smoking. I tend to take a pragmatic view to freedom of speech, and I wouldn't shed many tears if their websites disappeared, but I have a few problems with the Anonymous threat. They have done some great work in the past, notably with their campaign against Scientology, but this is a poorly thought-out move.

Firstly, if we tried to wipe out all the websites on the internet hosting content by people with dodgy views, there wouldn't actually be any more sites on the internet. Comment is Free, the Guardian's famous social charity project to give angry people on the internet a place to rant about whether global warming will impact Israel, Palestine or the Muslims hardest, simply would not exist.

Which in retrospect may not be the best argument I've ever made, but let's move on.

Secondly, as strategies go the approach is at best ineffective, and at worst actively counter-productive. Anonymous have succeeded in generating yetmorepublicity for an organization which thrives on attention and frankly, like the BNP in the UK, gets far more media coverage than it really merits or deserves.

Meanwhile, their actions will have little impact on a collection of people who live together, protest at real world events, and use shock value to get mainstream media attention. It is naive to believe that hacking some websites can bring down this sort of group. The best thing anyone can do is ask the media to shut the fuck up about them.

And finally there's the sheer hypocrisy of it. Anonymous make a big deal about freedom of speech, calling themselves variously "the Voice of Free Speech", or "aggressive proponents for the Freedom of Speech." Which would be great, if they were, but are they?

Well no, compare and contrast with: "the propaganda & detestable doctrine that you promote will be eradicated [...] we will not relent until you cease the conduction & promotion of all your bigoted operations & doctrines." The self-appointed defenders of free speech want to shut down people's websites. Bang goes another irony meter.

Admittedly this doesn't bug me so much when WBC are the victims, but back in 2010 they went after online banking in a misguided defence of Wikileaks - and never mind any customers or small businesses who might be affected. Ultimately this is about vigilante justice versus the rule of law. We might cheer them on when our enemies are on the receiving end, but who's next, and who decides? "First they came for the socialists..."

Note: A day after posting this, the folks at Anonymous performed an abrupt about-face, releasing a second press statement contradicting the first, and blaming their "open-posting policy" on press releases for supposedly allowing someone from WBC to post a press release on the anonymous website. Your mileage may vary, but the point of this piece remains whether it's WBC or online banks being targetted.